Pick Top Stocks For 2019, Best Stocks For 2019

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We are halfway through the calendar year and stock markets are sitting right about where they began 2018. Optimism about economic growth and lower corporate taxes has roughly balanced with worries about trade disruptions to leave the S&P 500 up by just 1% through the six months ending on June 30.

A few companies have dramatically outperformed that result by logging gains of as much as 245% so far this year. Below, we’ll take a closer look at a few of these standout stocks.

Hot Stocks To Watch For 2019: Roku, Inc.(ROKU)

When people think about cutting the cord from their cable TV operator, names that usually spring to mind include Amazon.com, Netflix, and maybe Hulu, but the one they should be thinking about is Roku.

The streaming device maker is actually in the midst of a major transformation to move away from hardware sales to one where its advertising platform is central to its business thesis. Last quarter Roku was finally able to make the pivot so that revenues from ads and fees exceeded those of its devices. Platform revenues more than doubled to $75.1 million, significantly ahead of the $61.5 million it made on its players.

It’s not abandoning the device market — a branded sound bar for controlling a home entertainment system will be coming to market soon — but advertising revenue will be the focus from here on out. It just launched its own ad marketplace and has lined up some heavy hitters, including Turner Broadcasting, Fox, and Viacom. According to Cord Cutter News, 70% of those who have cut the cord own a Roku device, while the maker of OTA DVRs, TabloTV, says 70% of its users also use a Roku device.

As the viewing public increasingly moves to streaming, they’ll turn to Roku in one form or another, and those advertisers trying to reach them, will do so as well.

Hot Stocks To Watch For 2019: Netflix, Inc.(NFLX)

Shares of streaming video giant Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) have doubled this year following a few quarterly reports that have investors feeling giddy about its growth potential. Its most recent outing was highlighted by a record 43% sales spike that came as subscriber gains blew past management’s forecasts despite a 14% increase in average membership fees.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

Those two trends imply that the streamer has a long runway for growth ahead both in its global subscriber base and in monthly prices that currently hover around $11. Netflix will post its next earnings report in mid-July, when it is expected to reveal it added another 6 million members worldwide.

Oil prices are rallying, and the global glut of oil from 2014-2016 is finally wearing down. That means investment opportunities.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, has exploded to over $79 a barrel for the first time in four years. But according to Bank of America, this is just the beginning. The firm sees prices soaring to $90 in the first half of 2019. However the firm adds that this figure could go as high as $100.

They wrote:

“Looking into the next 18 months, we expect global oil supply and demand balances to tighten driven by the ongoing collapse in Venezuelan output. In addition, there are downside risks to Iranian crude oil exports. Plus we see a high likelihood of OPEC working with Russia in 2019 to set a floor on oil prices.”

And now Morgan Stanley has chimed in with its own report. The report claims that a shipping revolution will push oil to $90 by 2020. Morgan Stanley’s global oil strategist Martijn Rats explains:

“Over the next few years, we expect tightness in one particular product — middle distillate — to lead to strength in one particular liquid, crude oil, and especially those crudes that look like Brent.”

So which stocks look set to benefit from this golden era? Here we use TipRanks’ stock screenerto pinpoint five top energy stocks with big exposure to rising oil prices. All these stocks share a very bullish ‘Strong Buy’ analyst consensus rating. This is based only on ratings from the last three months.

Top Penny Stocks To Buy Right Now: Tucows Inc.(TCX)

For a company to truly hold 100-plus bagger potential, it needs to meet a few important criteria:

Must be a small-cap company today (under $1 billion market cap).

Attempting to service a massive market opportunity.

Rock-solid financial statements.

Talented leadership with skin in the game.

One company that easily passes this test is Tucows.

Tucows operates three main businesses. First, it is one of the biggest providers of internet-domain registration services in the world. Second, it operates Ting mobile, which is a discount mobile-phone service in the U.S. Finally, it is rolling out a home fiber internet business.

With a market cap of just $600 million today, Tucows is certainly small enough to become a 100-plus bagger some day. Even if that happens, it would still just be a fraction of the size of telecom giants like Verizon Communications or AT&T.

As for growth potential, Tucows’ Ting mobile currently services about 200,000 customers in the U.S. That’s barely a rounding error when compared to the 224 million smartphones users that are active in the U.S. today (to say nothing of the tablet market). Meanwhile, Ting Internet is literally only available in three small U.S. cities. Needless to say, there’s a massive amount of room left for future growth.

As for financial strength, Tucows internet-domain registration business is a slow-growing cash cow that kicks off profits that are being reinvested into the growth of Ting mobile and Ting fiber. Even with those heavy investments, the company continues to throw off enough free cash flow to buy back stock and pay down debt.

Finally, Tucows has grown like a weed over the last 20 years under the skillful guidance of CEO Elliott Noss. Long-term shareholders have benefited hugely from his leadership, and he owns about 7% of the entire business. That aligns his incentives perfectly with shareholders.

While it is far from certain that Tucows will ever produce the kind of gains that Netflix shareholders have enjoyed, I wouldn’t rule it out, either.

Top Penny Stocks To Buy Right Now: Roku, Inc.(ROKU)

Shares of streaming device maker Roku had been surging recently as it put together a string of positive press releases, not least of which was the announcement its Roku Channel would soon be appearing on Samsung smart TVs.

That all seemed to get dashed when Amazon.com and Best Buy announced an expanded partnership that would see the e-commerce giant’s new Fire TV Edition smart TVs appear exclusively in the electronics retailer’s stores. And with Best Buy becoming a third-party merchant on the Amazon site, it would be a closed loop where such TV sales would all go through the bricks-and-mortar retailer.

Shares of Roku tumbled on the news, despite the fact that Roku’s own enabled TVs would still be sold at Best Buy. The market assumed that with Amazon entering the TV space with the last remaining electronics superstore, Roku would be squeezed out. But by being exclusive to Best Buy, it gives Roku unfettered competition in all other retail outlets.

That’s not necessarily the case and it looks like an overreaction that depressed the already beaten down media company. That gives investors an opportunity to profit on what is otherwise a growth stock that should be able to emulate Shopify’s returns in the future.

Roku has said its game plan is not to be selling devices, but rather to grow the number of users and build up the amount of content they stream.

At the end of the fourth quarter, Roku had 19.3 million active user accounts who streamed 4.3 billion hours of content in the quarter, a better than 15% increase from the end of the third quarter and 44% jump from a year ago. Hours of video streamed has risen 55% over the past year. Now that it is expanding beyond its own controlled ecosystem with the Samsung deal, other partners may also sign on and those figures could increase exponentially.

Roku’s stock may be down for the moment, but with no guarantees that Amazon will actually succeed and the significant installed base the streaming device maker already has, it may not be long before Roku’s stock starts heading higher.

Top Penny Stocks To Buy Right Now: BankFinancial Corporation(BFIN)

BidaskClub upgraded shares of BankFinancial (NASDAQ:BFIN) from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research report sent to investors on Thursday morning.

Several other analysts have also recently issued reports on the stock. Zacks Investment Research raised shares of BankFinancial from a hold rating to a buy rating and set a $19.00 price target on the stock in a report on Tuesday, May 8th. ValuEngineraised shares of BankFinancial from a hold rating to a buy rating in a report on Thursday, March 1st. One research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and four have given a buy rating to the company. The stock has an average rating of Buy and a consensus target price of $17.58.

When most people think of investing in stocks, all too often, the risk of outsized volatility comes to mind. And for better or worse, that volatility — and any given stock’s near-term direction — can be amplified depending on whether we’re in a bull or bear market.

But some businesses are much less susceptible to the whims of broader market conditions. So, we asked three Motley Fool investors to each pick a stock that thrives in both bull and bear markets. Read on to learn why they like these stocks.

Hot Undervalued Stocks To Watch Right Now: Roku, Inc.(ROKU)

Shares of Roku had surged over 7% through morning trading on Monday in a sign that investors might be expecting massive results from the streaming video platform. However, before today’s climb, Roku stock had plummeted nearly 28% over the last 12 weeks. The newly public company is expected to report quarterly revenues of $128.41 million after market close on Wednesday.

However, Roku, like many other young tech companies, is projected to post an adjusted quarterly loss for at least the next couple of years. In the first quarter, Roku is expected to report an adjusted quarterly loss of $0.16 per share. Still, Roku is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) that rocks an Earnings ESP of 14.56%, with its Most Accurate Estimate coming in 2 cents better than our current consensus estimate. This, of course, means that Roku is poised to top quarterly earnings estimates, and might be a stock to consider buying.

Hot Undervalued Stocks To Watch Right Now: Rite Aid Corporation(RAD)

Rite Aid Corp. (NYSE: RAD) is a national drugstore chain known for providing both over-the-counter medicine and prescription pharmaceuticals.

Shares of the company have dropped over 60% in the last year due to bearish sentiment about the company’s odds of holding on to its market share in the face of increasing competition from CVS Health Corp. (NYSE: CVS) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT).

However, Wall Street leaving Rite Aid out in the cold allows us to pick up the company at bargain prices.

Last month, Rite Aid received federal approval to move forward with a proposed merger with Albertsons Cos. LLC, a privately owned American grocery conglomerate.

Albertsons is currently the second-largest supermarket chain in North America, controlling 1,075 stores under various brands across the United States.

Merging with Albertsons will give Rite Aid access to a far larger system of distribution and resource allocation than the company has had access to previously – a move that is likely to bolster its bottom line once the merger is complete.

In fact, analysts believe Rite Aid’s market price is likely to spike to $2.50 after the merger is complete – a gain of over 50%.

Hot Undervalued Stocks To Watch Right Now: Vuzix Corporation(VUZI)

Never heard of Vuzix Corporation (NASDAQ:VUZI)? You’re not alone. This U.S.-based hardware company is a meager $140 million market cap and is thinly traded at just 160,000 shares per day.

However, with a primary focus on augmented reality, it could be the breakout tech pick your portfolio is looking for.

Some experts estimate augmented-reality tech will outpace virtual reality in terms of commercial units sold, with the potential market of 20 million commercial AR headsets in the market by 2021. Vuzix is tailor-made to ride this trend with its M300 smart glasses available globally and well-received by many early adopters in the tech space.

There will always be detractors who mock augmented reality after the early struggles of Alphabet and its Google Glass device. And others will say that a money-losing gadget company of this size is a long-shot that isn’t right for the typical investor portfolio.

I’ll admit that VUZI is an aggressive play. But if you adhere to the buy-below price and keep a long-term perspective, then it is highly likely that this tech will not only see widespread adoption but that a bigger player like Google or Facebook will snatch up Vuzi at the first glimmers of momentum to consolidate their grip on the emerging virtual-reality and augmented-reality space.

With shares comfortably under $10, that makes a tripler very possible here. Just watch the buy-below price on this particularly fast-moving stock.

Edgewater Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:EDGW) had a good run during the dotcom bubble.

It was a leading strategic consulting group that engaged in helping businesses integrate technology solutions into their corporate processes. As the digital age began, this was an industry with huge potential because there was enormous need.

Nowadays, not so much.

And that’s reflected in its stock price. The stock is off 56% since its IPO in 1996. The S&P 500 is up almost 280% over the same timeframe. In the past year, EDGW is off 25%.

The first-quarter earnings season has just kicked off. Per the latest Earnings Preview, the bottom line of S&P 500 companies is expected to increase at a highly impressive rate of 16.6% on a year-over-year basis. This prospective upside marks the maximum quarterly earnings growth pace in seven years.

The report further predicts that 11 of the 16 Zacks sectors are projected to exhibit double-digit earnings growth in the to-be-reported quarter. Total revenues for the same set of companies are projected to grow 7.5%.

However, focusing our attention on the Large Cap Pharma and Medical-Drugs sector, we note that both these sectors have decreased 6.2% and 4.2%, respectively, since February this year due to broader market pressure. Further, the S&P 500 index has registered a decline of 6.2% since the second month of 2018.

We remind investors that the U.S. stock market is facing a severe volatility since the last couple of months despite a strong start this year. This downside can mainly be attributable to a potentially damaging trade war between the world’s two largest economies, United States and China, since this February.

After President Donald Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of annual Chinese imports, China retaliated by notifying its intention to levy tariffs on 128 U.S. products. Such aggressive exchange has triggered tensions of a possible trade dispute between the two countries. Moreover, sluggish large-cap tech stocks are cited as another reason for this plummet in the market.

Despite the recent market unrest, an optimistic sentiment revolves around the remaining year. Notably, the biotech sector is likely to improve as the year advances. We expect new product sales to thrive in tandem with rising demand.

This apart, a successful innovation and a host of product launches, strong clinical study outcomes, more frequent FDA nods, solid performance of key products, growing demand for drugs, especially to deal with rare-to-treat diseases, an ageing population and an escalated healthcare expenditure are some of the factors to keep the sector stable.

It is important to note that the outlook for the upcoming first-quarter results looks bright. Per the Earnings Preview, the broader Medical sector (inclusive of drug, biotech as well as Medical Device companies) is expected to record 6.3% year-over-year growth in revenues and a 7.8% rise in earnings.

Best Biotech Stocks For 2019: Sunrun Inc.(RUN)

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SunRun Inc (NASDAQ:RUN) is a solar company that focuses on residential rooftop solar.

Alternative energy stocks have been up and down since the Trump administration has taken office. When subsidies and government support were coming apart and energy was put into reviving fossil fuel industries, renewables were under threat.

But recent tariff talk, especially regarding China, has given a boost to renewables again. China has been dumping solar panels on the U.S. market, hurting domestic producers.

Also, solar has hit an inflection point, and many companies are building in financing options for solar panels and more and more consumers are seeing the advantages of energy savings and independence.

Up more than 80% year to date, and carrying a respectable $1.2 billion market cap, RUN is a good choice in this growth sector.

Best Biotech Stocks For 2019: Roku, Inc.(ROKU)

Roku Inc. (NASDAQ:ROKU) shares look ready to recover from a five-month downtrend with a break above its 50-day moving average. The decline reversed roughly half of the post-IPO rally, setting up a good entry point for value-focused investors.

Management continues to execute well and expand its streaming TV user base with a shift from set-top boxes to built-in smart TV functionality.

The company will next report results on Aug. 8 after the close. Analysts are looking for a loss of 13 cents per share on revenues of $141.6 million. When the company last reported on May 9, a loss of seven cents per share beat estimates by nine cents on a 36.5% rise in revenues.

Best Biotech Stocks For 2019: Bank of America Corporation(BAC)

Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) shares were unchanged on Tuesday after bonking on their 50-day moving average on Monday despite reporting better-than-expected results on Monday morning. Earnings of 62 cents per share beat estimates by 3 cents on a 4.1% rise in revenues. The results were helped by a 9% revenue increase in its consumer banking business and a spike in equity trading related to the market volatility seen during the quarter.

When the company last reported on Jan. 17, earnings of 47 cents beat estimates by 2 cents on a 3.5% rise in revenues.